The Anti-Trump Conservative Firing Circle Is Wildly Out Of Touch With The American Electorate

They are “wildly out of touch”…and the prospects of them figuring it out are low. Here is Michael Doran writing at The Federalist:

Donald Trump, it turned out, read the conservative electorate much more accurately than the finest minds in GOP punditry. Their response is revenge.

In his rebuttal of Emerald Robinson’s attack on President Trump’s conservative critics, Jonah Goldberg singled me out for opprobrium because I applauded her thesis on Twitter. I thank him for this attention. It forces me to pause and collect my thoughts.

I prefer not to defend Robinson’s every turn of phrase, but her main point is irrefutable: Trump’s conservative critics have lost touch with the electorate. Their careers may indeed be humming along, as Goldberg claims, but politically they have maneuvered themselves into an untenable position.In a democratic culture, the pundit is not a philosopher. He exists to inform and guide like-minded voters, which is only possible if they trust him to be thinking along with them.

I know what it feels like to be out of touch with the electorate. In the last presidential election I worked on the campaign of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. After he conceded defeat, I joined the foreign policy team of Sen. Marco Rubio. About a week before Rubio bowed out of the race, Nate Silver, the election analyst, published an article analyzing the senator’s dilemma.

Rubio, Silver explained, was almost every Republican’s fallback candidate.He was the first choice of only one group: “cosmopolitan conservatives.” Silver’s label hit me with a jolt of self-recognition. I have degrees from Stanford and Princeton universities, spend many weeks of every year abroad, and live and work in uber-liberal Washington DC, which I love. I am a social conservative, and I identify wholeheartedly with Red America. Silver had me cold: I am a cosmopolitan conservative.

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“If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it.” —Benjamin Franklin (1789)